Of Interest

Recently reading Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here written in 1935 about a fascist takeover of the United States. Lewis writes the following description of one James Buck Titus:

James Buck Titus, who was fifty but looked thirty-eight, straight, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, long-mustached, swarthy — Buck was the Dan’l Boone type of Old American, or, perhaps, an Indian-fighting cavalry captain, out of Charles King. He had graduated from Williams, with ten weeks in England and ten years in Montana, divided between cattle-raising, prospecting, and a horse-breeding ranch. His father, a richish railroad contractor had left him the great farm near West Beulah, and Buck had come back home to grow apples, to breed Morgan stallions, and to read Voltaire, Anatole France, Nietzsche, and Dostoyefsky. He served in the war, as a private; detested his officers, refused a commission, and liked the Germans at Cologne. He was a useful polo player, but regarded riding to the hounds as childish. In politics, he did not so much yearn over the wrongs of Labor as feel scornful of the tight-fisted exploiters who denned in office and stinking factory. He was as near to the English country squire as one may find in America.

Titus is a friend of the of the protagonist Doremus Jessup. While the college is only mentioned once of twice more in a very cursory way, Titus is one of the novel’s heros and does Williams proud, even if only in fiction. (Sinclair Lewis lived in Williamstown for a time and perhaps saw knew of a “James Buck Titus”.)

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And Robert Penn Warren, writing All the King’s Men in the 1940s, knew of Williams — he has Jack Burden’s mother, trying to convince her son to attend a school better than the State University, tell him:

“‘Oh, Son,’ my mother said, ‘why don’t you be sensible and go to Harvard or Princeton.’ For a woman out of the scrub country of Arkansas, my mother had certainly learned a lot by that time about our better educational institutions. ‘Or even Williams,’ she said. ‘They say it’s a nice refined place.'”

Did Warren ever visit Williamstown?

Even if he didn’t, he’d heard it was “refined” (in spite of the fraternities). Maybe it was too “refined” for Jack (he smoked Luckys, after all).

Every fraternity had a “goat room” which was its secret meeting place. The prevailing “goat room” story was a facetious myth purportedly used by fraternities everywhere to terrorize fraternity pledges but which the pledges were too knowledgeable to believe, the lack of credibility being laughingly acknowledged by the fraternities.

The greatest author to use Williams in a story is Thomas Pynchon in “The Secret Integration”, where an academic institution attended by one of the main characters is (favorably?) analogized to Williams. Not the amount of attention received by Harvard in Gravity’s Rainbow, but at least the attention is far less sinister.

Then there is the classic Three in the Attic in which a Williams man is the central character and which was made into a forgetable feature length movie of the same name. As Casey Stengel used to say, “you can look it up”.

One of my favorite things to do in Williamstown is to spend a few hours looking at the books on the New Acquisitions shelves at Sawyer. The “Williams mention”/”based on Williams” books and films would make a great display, either there or down in the lobby/entrance cases. Perfecto for homecoming or reunion weekend.

The display could even travel to the Williams Club. And there could be a little brochure or sheet listing out the titles. And we could put the list up on Willipedia and Ephblog. Get excited.